Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626.
Lighting fixtures implementing LEDs may include LEDs embedded within a flexible sheet of material such as, for example, a flexible textile, flexible printed circuit board, and/or other flexible sheet of material. The LEDs may be powered and optionally controlled via power and control connections that may also optionally be incorporated into the flexible sheet of material.
Although such lighting fixtures implement LEDs in a flexible sheet of material, they may suffer from one or more drawbacks. For example, such lighting fixtures may not provide for retractability of the flexible sheet of material. Also, for example, the LEDs in the flexible sheet of material may be visible as light-dots in the flexible sheet of material—which may not be desired in certain situations. For example, in some situations it may be desirable to mix the light from a plurality of LEDs of different colors to create a uniform color or gradually changing color gradient. Also, for example, in some situations it may be desirable to create a diffuse lighting effect.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a lighting fixture that employs a retractable LED lighting layer and that may optionally overcome one or more drawbacks associated with existing lighting fixtures.